S.F. laws decoded on new website

Published 7:11 pm, Friday, September 27, 2013

As part of InnovateSF, city ordinances are available on the website so that anyone can use the data for analysis.

As part of InnovateSF, city ordinances are available on the website so that anyone can use the data for analysis.

Photo: Rashad Sisemore, The Chronicle

S.F. laws decoded on new website

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OpenGov launched a website this week designed to "decode" the often byzantine and confusing laws, rules and regulations governing San Francisco. The site is known as San Francisco Decoded.

The site is part of InnovateSF, an initiative to modernize the city's information systems and give the masses access to city government data. Such projects are cropping up around the country, from municipalities to the White House, and around much of the developed world.

The idea is that with easier access to the information, regular folks will build their own tools to analyze public data. That includes everything from crime and health to the full text of laws.

Waldo Jaquith, who runs State Decoded, a free software platform that puts laws online, contributed to the project. "If information can't be found with Google, it might as well not exist," Jaquith said.

For example, a pair of developers used data recently to examine how criminal activity relates to San Francisco's varied topography. Their analysis showed that less crime occurs in the hills than the flatlands. Though it was extremely cursory, those kinds of amateur sociological experiments are one of the hoped-for outcomes of open-data initiatives.

City chief information officer Jay Nath points out that laws were first in books, then online - the next step would naturally seem to involve interactive software. His office provided raw texts - available on code site GitHub - and the Open Government Foundation wrapped it into the site with a portal to access the information, known as an API.

"We want to make sure this information is truly accessible to the public in a modern way," Nath said.

Technical integrations involving APIs are not child's play. But digital tools are slowly simplifying what were once complicated technical procedures. Jaquith said that data need to always be organized in formats technologists can use.

"We don't know exactly what people are going to accomplish," Nath said. "That's the beauty of it."

Some feel that government should charge businesses if they're making a profit off the data. It is, after all, paid for by taxpayers. Nath, though, points out that the data isn't restricted - some people may just have a clever idea on how to use it. "If someone decides to create value, and sell it back to the public, I think market forces are at play," he said.

NextBus, for instance, uses city data to tell people when the next Muni bus will arrive, and is free. But other apps may choose to charge if they believe they have a better service.

Others worry that citizens might mistake private businesses for government branches if they use government data. Sites will need to make their affiliation clear.

The next step is working with other large cities. Nath notes that a policy researcher would benefit from analysis software that contained the current laws of every municipality around the country.

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The work will be in setting data formats and protocol standards so they can integrate. "That allows information to flow more freely between cities," Nath says.